Asia Pacific Coral Reef Superb
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 4th Asia Pacific Coral Reef Symposium in Cebu City in the Philippines. Over 600 participants discussed coral reef science and conservation. The meeting was a very attractive mix of basic science and applied reef conservation & management.
Academic researchers (from 37 countries!) met with representatives of environmental NGOs (People and the Sea, Oceana, Rare, and many others) who presented their conservation and community outreach work. There was indeed quite a bit of social science at this coral reef conference – how to convince the people living next to coral reef not to mess them up, how to establish marine protected areas, and how to do marine conservation and at the same time create chances for (often poor) coastal populations to gain livelihoods from these conservation efforts.
All talks I saw were interesting (I am not exaggerating here), with really well done presentations by students as well. A few presentations nevertheless stood out to me.
In an inspiring plenary lecture, Robert Richmond talked about the diverse threats to coral reefs, from the US testing of hydrogen bombs on Bkini Atoll in the 60s, to run off and destructive fishing practices – and how corals can still recover.
Wayne Phillips from Thailand reported on some of the crassest examples of coral reef abuse I had ever heard about. Super-unsustainable tourism operators in Thailand pull coral blocks from the reef to put them closer to the path which their customers take on “reef walking” tours! To top things off, the operators feed the fish bread (bad for the fish), which they bring in a plastic bag, which they then just leave on the reef (or what’s left of it). Ouch. Wayne still managed to keep the tone of his talk positive, and pointed out how he and his students are working to improve this situation.
For me as a fish nerd a presentation by Howard Choat was one of the highlights of the conference.
He lectured on the life history of parrotfishes and surgeonfishes, both herbivores, but only superficially similar in their life-styles. The parrotfishes, break up coral rubble and extract high protein cynaobacteria rather than eat cellulose-rich algae – this has all kinds of ecological consequences, for instance the parrotfish mature quicker, and live shorter lifes.
Rene Abesamis talked about the larval dispersal of the vagabond butterflyfish in the Visayas region of the Philippines. Building on earlier work of his group, they expanded the area they sampled for juvenile and adult fish. A combination of biological factors (larval duration) and oceanographic factors determine where the larvae end up and settle on the reef.
My head is filled to the brink with new information, which I will need to digest during the next few days!
Since it is more fun in the Philippines (the only marketing slogan I have ever heard which is true), the conference dinners featured ample dancing and singing by performers from Cebu and the rest of the country.
